The winners of The Washington Post 2014 Travel photo contest were just announced, and the top two, Natalie Fay Green from Bethesda and Kathi Weinheimer from Alexandria, talked via Google Hangout to Food and Travel editor Joe Yonan, deputy Travel editor Zofia Smardz and Features photo editor Anne Farrar about their work. The editors also shared how they picked the winning photographs and how to make a sunset photo stand out.

“It’s really stark and elegant,” said Farrar about the winning photograph, a landscape of North Carolina’s Outer Banks in the winter. “[The photo] was captured in a way that you don’t have the entire house there so it makes you wonder, what’s the story behind this picture? When we are looking for images…what’s exciting about pictures is: Where does that take me in my mind? Do I want to go there? Is it something that I can bring a story line? If I went to this place, what would I encounter, what would I perceive? And would it be exciting to take a step through that grass and find out what is on the other side?”

Natalie Fay Green replied that she was “trying to capture a moment out of time” when she took the photo. She decided to tone it in white and black to enhance the timeless perception.

Smardz referred to Kathi Weinheimer’s second place photo as a “painting.” The photo, which tied for second, depicts a sunrise at a beach onEdisto Island south of Charleston, S.C. “I like to be a butterfly,” Weinheimer said during the Google Hangout. “I just don’t like to stay in one spot because there’s so many beautiful things to take pictures of, so I just run around taking lots of pictures and everything, so every once in a while I get something good.”

“That must be the most beautiful analogy for travel photography that I’ve ever heard, the idea of a butterfly with the camera running around,” Yonan said.

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Travel Photo Contest 2014 winners

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Our 1,550 contestants really got around, and the entries ran the gamut of subjects: Mountains and deserts, urban street scenes and country landscapes, adorable animals, sunrises and sunsets, and lots of water. We present our four winners and 11 honorable mentions.

Caption

Our 1,550 contestants really got around, and the entries ran the gamut of subjects: Mountains and deserts, urban street scenes and country landscapes, adorable animals, sunrises and sunsets, and lots of water. We present our four winners and 11 honorable mentions.

First place winnerA 37-year-old stay-at-home mom and part-time attorney, Green felt immediately drawn to the old house she spotted from the parking lot of the Oregon Inlet, a fishing area on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, in December. “What attracted me was how the whole scene — the dune, the house, and the sky — were all simultaneously so dynamic and so timeless,” she told us. “I felt as if I could have stood in the same spot 50 years ago and seen the exact same thing.” She took her photo while her avid fisherman husband tried his luck at the nearby beach. “He didn’t catch anything,” Green said wryly, “but I did.” And what a catch it was.Natalie Fay Green, Bethesda, Md.